streaming

Netflix might be planning to bring its "Watch Instantly" feature to new devices soon. Currently built in to several products, like Sony HDTVs, and very popular on the Xbox 360, the feature lets subscribers watch any of thousands of movies in the Netflix library on their TVs. There are no physical discs; the videos stream via Web connection.

And according to Afterdawn.com, which quotes unnamed executives familiar with the situation, the Nintendo Wii and Apple's iPhone platform are next on the list. The Wii is a fairly obvious choice as Nintendo has been pushing streaming or … Read more

It may be operating in a legal grey area, but Grooveshark is still my favorite on-demand music app--type in any song, artist, or album, and there's a pretty good chance that it's in Grooveshark's database, allowing you to begin playing it immediately. It's great not only for impulse listens, but also for creating playlists of songs you don't own and would never buy, like my favorite heavy metal hits from junior high school. So far, the lawsuit filed by EMI in May hasn't shut the site down or significantly decreased the number of songs … Read more

Now that Blu-ray has won the format war with HD DVD we can all relax and buy Blu-ray players and not have to worry about what physical format our disks are, right?

Maybe not. Besides outside pressure from the combination of high-speed broadband and HD streaming media, a new challenger has risen to seriously challenge Blu-ray's superiority. And it's based heavily on its oldest rival: HD DVD.

Meet China Blue Hi-definition Disk (CBHD), a new HD video disk format based heavily on Toshiba's HD DVD format. Toshiba has licensed its technology to the CBHD group for use in China. The format now has the official backing of the Chinese government and some analysts think it could be the global per-unit HD leader in as little as twelve months. It's already outselling Blu-ray in China.… Read more

Major League Baseball took another step in proving its technical superiority over the other three major sports leagues Wednesday, by connecting its wired MLB.tv subscription package with its At Bat iPhone application.

Beginning Wednesday, MLB will stream every single regular and postseason baseball game to fans via the $9.99 iPhone and iPod Touch application it initially released last year. Customers who already subscribe to MLB.tv and MLB.tv Premium packages--its online baseball viewing service--can now watch any game live from their phone or computer. The games will be streamed over the iPhone or iPod's Wi-Fi connection … Read more

Is today my birthday? No? Because I just got one helluva gift: Public Radio Player 2.0, the latest version of the killer radio-streaming app, which now lets you listen to your favorite shows on-demand.

Missed last week's "This American Life"? No problem. The app has the latest episode. Want to catch up on "Talk of the Nation Science Friday?" You'll find several weeks' worth of back catalog. Same goes for "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me," "Fresh Air," "Marketplace," and countless other radio gems.

Granted, you can … Read more

The folks at the video broadcasting service Livestream have a new tool out for Twitter users called Twitcam that lets anyone with a Twitter account start streaming their own show, complete with live chat.

Each page the service creates gets its own URL, which users can come back to at any point and watch once the live-streaming portion of the show is over.

As for the chat, it's all handled via tweets. Anytime someone replies to one of your tweets where the link to the show is included, the app counts it as a reply. It then aggregates these in one place, so everyone who is watching your show can see the entire conversation. It's not exactly the best way to handle it, since sometimes it's nice to have some basic text chatter that doesn't fill up your Twitter stream with stray tweets, but it's done in a way that keeps everything tightly-organized.

Livestream says that Twitcam was built in about a week and uses new player tools that are going into an updated version of its API that will be released in the near future. The company hopes these will let anyone build a similar service with their own branding, and audience tools--preferably with a chat system that does not require so many tweets.

An archive of the live chat I used while testing this service out is embedded after the jump.

See also: Justin.tv's CamTweet (which is in private beta)… Read more

Even as the decline in DVD sales--both in the U.S. and abroad--has accelerated since 2006, DVD rentals through services such as Netflix (adding 25 percent more customers since 2008) and Redbox (adding 500 machines per month) have been booming.

The reason, as The Economist surmises, may be a shifting view on how consumers prefer to consume entertainment:

The real worry (for the movie industry), then, is not that people are abandoning DVDs but that they are abandoning the notion of owning them.

This is perhaps exacerbated by an industry that can't seem to make up its mind … Read more

We'd never award it prizes for looks or design, but like all the software in the TuneWiki family, this streaming app's capability to spool lyrics in time with the music makes it an application well worth your attention.

TuneWiki begins with an online database where community users upload song lyrics, Wikipedia-style. When you use TuneWiki as a media player, it hooks into this database to stream lyrics in time with the music. There are occasionally mistakes, and songs without lyrics, both of which are a function of the underlying community Wiki and not the application itself.

But the … Read more

Netflix streaming will be coming to online-enabled Sony Bravia televisions this fall.

Once enabled via a software update, the Netflix feature will give Bravia sets access to the same 12,000-title catalog of Netflix streaming movies and TV shows that's available on a growing number of devices, including the Xbox 360, Roku Player, and all recent Samsung and LG Blu-ray players and home theater systems.

Compatible Sony TVs include the XBR9 series, the Z5100 series, and the W5100 series. However, a wider variety of sets can access the Netflix feature by adding the Sony Bravia Internet Video Link, an … Read more